Bloggystyle -- The Greatest

For most people, the point of a Church Festival is to celebrate the church community and raise funds for the maintenance and upkeep of the Church. Granted, it's been mostly about getting wasted and eating free food for us, but we've always understood the grand design for the Church Festival.

The problem is that the patrons who come to the grounds free of charge don't always see it that way. Arrests are made every year, and the offenses range from packing heat to urinating on people's property upon leaving the Festival. Years ago, Nasty Naus and I decided that instead of calling it Greek Fest, we'd simply refer to it as G Fest.

Most of the disturbances in the past were blamed on the Rides section. While the rest of the Festival has something to do with the church or Greek ethnicity, the rides are their own independent section. And of course, with the notable exception of Tupac, the rides section is where the minorities congregate. So steps had been taken in the past to shut down the rides earlier and beef up police presence.

Well, last year proved that it was an unmitigated failure. Everything was going normally until Saturday night. In what was one of the oddest decisions of all time, someone decided it was a good idea to put a live American band on a stage in the beer tent, a shitty one named Rhythm Method at that.

So what happened? At the same time the rides were shutting down, forcing hundreds of people onto neighboring streets and garnering ill will, some drunk fools jumped up on stage with the band and did their little mosh routine on stage. Before the 5-0 could react in time, outright mayhem and destruction started going down in the beer tent while the rides' patrons got rowdy just off the grounds. Incredibly, our Fight Club Friend, 1%, was in the beer tent getting hammered while it was all going down and was completely oblivious to it, walking away from it unknowingly while it went on around him.

At the end of the night, 30 arrests and 80 citations were made, and the 5-0 reported shots fired, property damage, cruising and an attempt to overturn a Milwaukee County bus. Nasty Naus survived by not being there, and I unwittingly survived by lounging around in the Shishkabob tent getting wasted and unsuccessfully hitting on girls.

So what changes were made for the G Fest this year to avoid a repeat? The church is removing all references to "Greek Fest," changing its name to the "Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church 40th Annual Family Festival." They also moved the rides to the other corner of the churchgrounds, away from the beer tent.

Regardless, it's clear that you can take the GFest name out of the festival, but you can't take the GFest nature out of it. Surely, the improprieties will continue around the House of the Lord.

In anticipation of the start of GFest on Thursday, Nasty Naus and I will retell our most ridiculous Festival story ever tomorrow, also known as one of the most unpleasant experiences of our Fight Club Friend's life.